Pressure Pays Off for Home-Schooling Families

Pressure from small but impassioned lobbies for home schooling is
moving a growing number of states to reconsider both their
compulsory-attendance laws and their regulations governing private
schools.

With financial support from advocacy organizations, parents seeking
the right to educate their children at home, unthreatened by state
regulation, have increasingly taken their complaints to the
legislatures and the courts--with such success that more than a third
of the states have in the last five years modified education laws to
make them more permissive toward home schooling.

"There is a network of home-schooling people around the country who
want that alternative, who see the nationwide push toward excellence
and say, 'The schools are bad, maybe I can do better at home,"' said
Mary K. Albrittain, chief of pupil services for the Maryland education
department, which recently relaxed its regulations on home schools.
"We're responding to a request by folks for that choice--it's not too
unusual to be pressured by society."

Developments in recent months confirm that, as one home-schooling
advocate puts it, "the trend is toward more freedom for home
schoolers.'' Christopher J. Klicka, executive director of the Home
School Legal Defense Association, added that although a few states are
attempting to place tighter restrictions on home schools, "the court
cases are going against them."

Since the beginning of the year, advocates have won battles in seven
states over the right to teach children at home.

Numbers Are Unclear

Estimates of the number of children in home instruction nationwide
are ambiguous, ranging from only 120,000 to as many as 1 million, but
state education officials and home-schooling advocates alike say the
practice is becoming more common.

As a result of the growing popularity of home schooling, advocates
say, more parents are challenging state compulsory-education laws that
were designed in the early part of the century to prevent child labor.
Often, these laws call for mandatory school attendance or "equivalent
instruction," but fail to provide a clear definition of what
constitutes a school or its equivalent.

Because the laws are vague, decisions over whether to allow a home
school are typically left to local superintendents--whose decisions in
individual cases can vary widely within one state, advocates point
out.

"States can't totally restrict parents from exercising the
home-schooling option, but they can put parameters on it," said Cheryl
M. Karstaedt, first attorney general of Colorado, who has studied the
issue for the state board. "Part of the problem has been that the
parameters haven't been well defined."

The Home School association has filed federal suits in four
states--North Dakota, New York, Pennsylvania, and South
Carolina--challenging ambiguous laws, Mr. Klicka said. Charging that
school districts with particularly strict requirements are violating
the civil rightsof home schoolers, the suits ask that the laws be
overturned.

Need To Rewrite Laws

"Ultimately, legislatures will have to rewrite their
compulsory-education laws" to set clear guidelines for home schools,
Mr. Klicka said.

In the past five years, courts in Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota,
Missouri, and Wisconsin, citing vagueness, have thrown out parts of
those states' compulsory-education laws, according to Patricia M.
Lines, a policy analyst for the U.S. Education Department.

All but Iowa have passed new laws allowing home schools, but a
recent Iowa Supreme Court decision and pressure from home schoolers may
force the issue this year.

A Texas statute that allowed school officials to bring truancy
charges against parents who taught their children at home was
overturned in April by a state district court. The court ruled that
because the statute did not specify standards for private schools, home
schools qualified as private schools under state law. (See Education
Week, April 29, 1987.)

But in Ohio, the state supreme court in March upheld the requirement
that parents seek local district approval for a home-study program; the
court held that the statute was not unconstitutionally vague, as home
schoolers had argued.

In addition, the court said the state's actions did not infringe
upon the family's right to freely exercise its religion. The U.S.
Supreme Court has been asked to review the state high court's
decision.

State education officials have a responsibility to ensure that
children taught at home are receiving an adequate education, said
Gwendolyn H. Gregory, deputy general counsel for the National School
Boards Association.

"Our members want to be assured that the state's interest in having
an educated populace is maintained through some sort of standard," Ms.
Gregory said.

The association does not have a specific policy on home schools, but
a resolution adopted last year urges that private schools, including
home schools, be "held to the same standards" as public schools.

Home schools should be subject to formal state accreditation, said
Brad B. Ritter, spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association,
which opposed the recent Texas ruling on the issue.

"We believe people can educate their children any way they want, but
if there are minimum accreditation standards that apply to public
schools, then they ought to apply to home schools as well," Mr. Ritter
said. In Texas, private schools are required to be accredited by the
state or a private-school association.

While most states could not legally require home schools to be
accredited by a state agency, there needs to be some specific form of
oversight, such as standardized testing, said Ms. Lines of the
Education Department.

"As the number of home schoolers grows, we have an increased chance
of seeing some abuses, such as parents keeping kids at home and not
offering an educational program," Ms. Lines said.

The Education Department considers home schooling a state issue,
said Edward Anthony, a special assistant in the office of private
education.

"Home schooling represents a form of parental choice, and the
Secretary [of Education William J. Bennett] and the President have
supported parental choice, but the department has not taken a formal
position on the issue," Mr. Anthony said.

Teacher Licensing

About 90 percent of the Home School Association's 6,000 members
educate their children at home for religious reasons, said Mr.
Klicka.

Parents have been most successful in getting states to relax
teacher-licensing requirements, because most parents would not qualify
for certification, said Mr. Klicka. About half the members of his
association do not have more than a high-school diploma, he said.

Maryland and Colorado, two of the last five states requiring
teachers in home schools to be certified, dropped the regulation this
summer and relaxed curriculum requirements. Only Iowa, Michigan, and
North Dakota require home teachers to hold a license.

Colorado's board of education this summer concluded a year-long
debate over standards for home schools by eliminating the requirement
that home-school teachers either be certified or use a state-approved
correspondence course.

Pressure to change the regulations came from a flurry of lawsuits
and lobbying by home-schooling advocates, state education
officials said. One legislator estimated that 12 home-schooling
families were involved last spring in court cases, including some in
which districts brought criminal charges against parents.

In April, a bill that would have allowed parents to operate home
schools without oversight by school officials, as long as students were
tested every two years, was passed by the state Senate, but killed in a
House committee.

Then, in May, a court decision favoring one family provided
additional impetus for change, according to Mr. Klicka. The Gunnison
County District Court dismissed truancy charges against a Lake City
couple who said their religious beliefs required them to teach their
children at home. The court ruled that the state-approval requirements
were not the "least restrictive means" of seeing that the children were
educated properly and recommended yearly standardized testing
instead.

Under the state board's new rules, home schools automatically obtain
state "approval" by sending notification to their local school district
that includes the number of hours of instruction and subjects that will
be covered. Students must be tested every year, and if they fall below
the 14th percentile, the district may force them to attend a public or
private school.

Pupil 'Portfolio' Required

The Maryland state board voted in June to eliminate the
certification requirement for parents and home visits by school
officials. Parents need only file a form notifying the district of
their intent to keep children home, and provide a portfolio of each
child's work twice a year.

Previously, the board had required that parents follow the
public-school curriculum closely, including its mandated textbooks.

"The guidelines were set up with much care about children, but it
often made it difficult for a parent teaching at home," conceded Ms.
Albrittain of the state education department. "Sometimes, counties got
really stiff with [the regulations]."

The board's action was precipitated by the attempts of
home-schooling advocates to legislate the changes, Ms. Albrittain said.
Several hundred people attended hearings on proposed legislation last
year to eliminate the requirements. Although the bill was defeated,
state education officials felt pressure to allow parents more freedom,
she said.

Other State Actions

In other developments:

Minnesota's new compulsory-education law went into effect in August,
repealing vague language that required "school" attendance but failed
to define acceptable forms of schooling. The law gives parents several
ways to educate children at home, and no certification or college
degree is required of parents as long as children are tested yearly and
score above the 30th percentile.

The Iowa Supreme Court has overturned on a technicality the
convictions of a couple charged with not having their children taught
by a certified teacher. Since state law requires 120 days of
instruction, Greg and Karen Trucke of Mapleton were wrongly prosecuted
"before the fact," after only 30 days into the school year, the court
said.

The ruling does not alter the certification requirement, but home-
and church-school supporters said it will prevent other convictions
this year and give them time to push the legislature to pass a bill
that was introduced last year. The bill, supported by Gov. Terry
Branstad and endorsed by a commission he set up to study the problem,
would substitute yearly testing of students for the teacher-licensing
rule.

This summer, Gordon M. Ambach, at the time New York's commissioner
of education, held in an advisory opinion that home schools do not need
to seek state approval, because the law requires only that students who
are not taught in public or private schools receive "equivalent
instruction." Districts had varied in their enforcement of that
provision, with several requiring approval by the superintendent.

Mr. Klicka said the opinion is "somewhat of a victory" and would
help his group defend home schools in the state that he said had been
"harassed" by districts. The association's case seeking to strike down
the compulsory-education law will continue, he said.

The Nebraska attorney general, in a July opinion, said a resolution
passed by the state board of education that would have required
inspection of home schools and testing of home-schooled children
violated state law. The opinion also held that the state education
department's authority over home and church schools was "highly
limited." The state board repealed the resolution in August.

Vol. 07, Issue 04, Page 11-12

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